


Sundered Innocence

by FlorarenaKitasatina



Category: SUGURI
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Again; WHY?, Bondage, Child Abuse, F/M, Grimdark, Headcanon, How Do I Tag, Implied Augments, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Psychological Torture, Serial Escalation, Shifu Is A Bigger Bastard Than We Thought, Size Difference, Spoilers, This Is Not A Kinkfic, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, To The Pain, Torture, Unable To Understand, from bad to worse, why would you do that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:42:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorarenaKitasatina/pseuds/FlorarenaKitasatina
Summary: There are many things children should not go through, harrowing scenarios and heart-stopping horrors that would leave many parents angry and many young ones screaming in terror. Things best left unmentioned, to preserve innocence for as long as possible. But for one such child, trapped on a spaceship with a monster crueler than any imagined, she discovers first hand what it means to have one's innocence ripped away from her body. Subjected to horrors that would leave many sleepless for weeks on end, little Nanako wonders if she can even make it out of this fresh hell alive and with her prepubescent mind intact, all the while her body changes in ways she cannot fathom.Sadly for her, the monster who has decided to subject her to said horrors has other ideas in mind...





	1. Violation

**Author's Note:**

> And now, a pure grimdark fic, taking place before and during the events of SUGURI and Acceleration of SUGURI and taking little bits from 100% Orange Juice, and will by default contain some spoilers. Co-written with Percival, who is wondering how much darker it can get.
> 
> This will contain all sorts of fucked-up crazy shit out the ass, some headcanon, and things that are not condoned by the co-authors in any way. As in, we're only writing this to tell a fucked-up tale, not because we in any manner actually agree with it. I felt immensely uncomfortable writing this piece, but this was an idea that wouldn't stop bothering me until I started getting it out. **All readers have been aptly warned. No further warnings will be made beyond this point content-wise.** Oh, and reality will ensue at points.

There was a wide room, easily ten yards by ten yards in size, with a dim light shining from the ceiling. That light flickered, barely illuminating a steel door resting on one side, with a large queen-sized bed lined with stained sheets and pillows resting opposite that door, itself beset upon a very bulky frame of steel with odd sliding doors and two keypads on the posts that were at the bed's front. This bed was surrounded by dense carpet and steel walls lined with dull blue wires built into small glass tubes. Around the room were scattered a couple of nightstands hewn of wood, a desk with a myriad of shelves on top and drawers on the bottom, a chair in front of said desk, and another set of sliding doors next to the bed. The doors next to the bed led into a closet, and was hewn of wood instead of steel. Darkness cradled that closed closet heavily, further reinforced therein by silence. Inside, daring not to peek out betwixt the cracks of the sliding doors, sat a small person leaning against the far wall. The person shivered, cold, yet dared not shift so much as an inch to either side. Whoever was inside simply felt drained; left with little strength with which to move, leaving the cruel sable to subject them to its tender mercies.

Time passed, though how long the person couldn't tell. But when it did, the silence gave way to the steel door opening with a hiss, followed by a beep and a set of muffled footsteps, so soft it gave an illusion that said footsteps weren't even there. Then, it was followed by a series of rustling cloths, each one ending in a soft _flomp_ so light it barely registered to the hiding person's ears. A masculine voice penetrated the inky black once the rustling had ceased, deep and commanding in tone, "Hiding again, aren't we… Nanako?" Feet shuffled, possibly against fabric, still muffled yet growing in intensity all the same and thus shattering that illusion. The person in the closet still had yet to actually move, stuck in a trance that felt surreal. "I know this room like the backside of my own hand; hiding won't do you any good," the owner of the voice called rather tauntingly, as the sound of wood rolling and snapping to a halt filled the air.

For a heart-stopping moment, the footsteps faded, ceasing to exist as wood snapped and rolled over and over again. "I've scoured your little hiding spots, every single time. Must we repeat the lesson, again and again?" the voice asked as the wood ceased moving, and the sound of fabric rustling filled the air in its place. The rustling seemed to drag on forever, before it too stopped and gave way to a brief silence.

The small person's heart began to race when the shuffling steps started once again, growing louder, and possibly closer. For the first time since taking refuge, dread sank in, and a small whimper of fear forced itself out of their throat as the closet doors were thrown wide open. A tall man, nearly six feet in stature, stared down the small form. His short black hair sat in a tangled heap upon his head, and round-rimmed glasses did little to hid his grey irises and irritated scowl. He was a healthy sort; lean, a bit muscular but not going overboard, and rather lacking in bodily hair. The lad was also walking in the nude; not a shred of cloth was to be found on his body.

He, in turn, stared down a child-like girl, who looked fearfully back up at him with short purple hair and wide violet irises that beheld pinprick pupils. She did everything in her power to avoid looking anywhere else but his face, an effort that quickly crumpled as he took just one step into the closet. Bruises, old and new, dotted her small and lithe body, which was barely past the threshold of puberty and also devoid of cloth. She pressed her back more firmly against the wall as the man took another step toward her, as if that could save her.

For a second, the man before her gave a ghastly grin at her feeble attempt to phase through the wall. Then, before she could blink, he pounced her, seizing her arms with both hands and lifting her effortlessly off of the floor. She kicked and wailed in surprise, and though her hits landed harder than they should have, they did nothing to get him to release his grip. "N-no! I-I won't submit!" the girl screamed, her voice raspy and hoarse as she fought with all of her might to free herself.

"Still got a bit of spunk in you, Nanako? After two weeks of being in here?" the man taunted, his cruel smirk widening fractionally. Nanako made to kick at his face, but he merely extended his arms to hold her at a distance, causing her foot to brush up against his nose harmlessly. "Don't worry… that will change…" he promised darkly, before dropping her to the floor and pouncing on her prone form immediately afterward.

Nanako did not have the chance to even start scrambling as the man was on top of her, grasping her legs and forcing them wide open. At the same time he loomed over her, almost going nose to nose with her before her hands started trying desperately to push him away. "Sh-Shifu, stop!" she cried, though her plea fell on deaf ears. Her hands hit their mark, though; blindly, she managed to poke Shifu in both eyes with an index and a ring finger after dislodging his glasses.

Shifu pulled back with a pained cry, more alarmed than anything else as his grip loosened and Nanako wiggled free. "Why you little _shit!_ " Shifu barked, shaking off the pain as Nanako scrambled to her feet and made to beat a hasty retreat. He scrambled after her, pinning her down before she could even take three steps away from him. His hands raced to her neck, grip tightening as she flailed on the floor in a bid to get away. Slowly, though, her struggles grew weaker, and within a minute she was gasping and coughing desperately.

Only as she reached to his hands and tried pulling them away did he let go, only to seize her by the sides of her head immediately afterwards. His grip tightened again, grasping entire locks of hair, and he pulled her back just enough to make her sit down in front of him. "You are just asking for it now…" Shifu hissed, pulling himself up to his feet and dragging Nanako with, turning to the bed with a gleam in his eyes that could only be called diabolical.

Without missing a beat he threw her upon the bed, and raced to the nearest keypad before hastily typing a code into it. _"Request granted,"_ a robotic voice droned as one of the doors upon the bed slid open. Nanako had only just sat up when something raced from the abyss behind the door and clamped itself upon her left ankle. She paled a substantial margin as she beheld a thick steel rod, ending in a shackle, now holding her to the bed. She tugged, feebly, but unlike Shifu it did not let go nor shift in the slightest.

She heard more keys being pressed. Another robotic voice parroted, _"Request granted,"_ and another rod shot out of a sliding door to anchor her right ankle. Now secured, the rods spread, dragging Nanako's legs with until they were as far as they could go. Pain shot through her rattled nerves, and her hands raced to pry them off to no avail. She started hyperventilating, mind clouding with agony as her legs slowly went numb from being forced to do a sideways split. Shifu watched her all the while, grinning demonically as his now-helpless captive tried and tried again to get out of her predicament.

"I'm actually quite impressed. Your new skeletal structure can handle things you couldn't before," Shifu noted with a coldness in his voice that sent chills down Nanako's spine. "I could hit you with three guitars on the head, in quick succession, and you wouldn't even receive so much as a concussion." Blood raced downstream, and his body started reacting to it straight away. He clambered on the bed, inching his way towards his victim, who stopped upon feeling the mattress shifting to look at him with a blanched gaze. Once again he seized her hands, and pinned her back upon the bed, earning a pained shriek as he heard a soft metallic groan accompanied by a pop.

More bars raced from the other set of posts to secure her wrists from the back of the bed, and spread them apart too. Within seconds, Nanako was completely immobilized, and left just as defenseless. She felt something come to rest on her stomach, as thick as a bread pan stuffed with a fresh loaf and about as long as both her feet stacked atop one another. Her gaze averted to the ceiling, but a hand grasped her chin and pulled her head forward, as once again a cruel face edged closer into her view.

Shifu raised a hand, balled it into a fist, and started punching Nanako upon the head with it whilst his other hand kept it steady. Again and again, he connected solidly each time, further bruising Nanako and causing parts of her face to swell with the impact. He stopped when his fist rammed into her lips, driving them into her teeth and drawing blood. Then, he let go, and started whaling on her chest. Despite the repeated strikes, he heard not one bone crack in her body, but the swellings and bruising told him that her body was still reacting to the assault nonetheless. He stopped just shy of her underdeveloped breasts, little more than tiny mounds upon an otherwise-flat chest, and hopped off the bed.

Nanako eyed him, blood pooling in her mouth and tears welling in her eyes as he strode to one of the nightstands. The bars lifted her a few centimeters off of the bed, but no higher than that. He pulled one of the drawers open, and Nanako strained against her bonds, yet they remained as steadfast as the bed itself. Her vision clouded as she heard objects jostling, some of clinking glass and others of clanking steel, but she dared not blink as Shifu continued to rummage for something.

Some part of her really, _really_ did not want to know what he was searching for. She drew shaky breaths, hearing another door sliding open with a metallic hiss. She felt something cold and rather thin poking and prodding at her back door, but it went no further than that prior to retracting. Shifu pulled a few objects out of the drawer and shut it with a knee, before walking back to his prey and putting his treasure between her spread legs. She kept her watery gaze fixed on him as he picked up two of the objects, and a scream wedged itself halfway up her throat, holding both her breath and her voice as she beheld what was now in his hands.

One object was a bottle filled almost to the brim with dark red liquid. It was without a label, and sported a tiny red screw-on cap that held the sloshing fluid seamlessly. The other was shaped like an adult's fist and it was hewn of an iron-grey metal, clenched and capturing everything down to the veins on the knuckles and the tiny criss-crossing cracks in its metallic skin. Shifu raised a foot and seized the slender object that had prodded Nanako, gripping it with his toes to keep it still as he anchored the steel fist onto it. When it was secure, he uncorked the bottle, and poured its contents onto the metal fist. He was quite liberal, almost generous with the application of the stuff, for when he lifted the bottle it was only an eighth full.

Carefully, he smeared it upon the metal with his hand, making damn sure it was coated thoroughly. Then he shoved the bottle in Nanako's mouth, pouring the remaining contents over her wounds and causing her to weakly thrash about as a fiery heat assaulted everything down to the gums and her tonsils. When the bottle parted, she desperately tried to spit out the liquid, yet even as she coughed the unbearable, searing pain lingered and played a tarantella upon her hapless mouth.

Somehow, the sensation grew hotter within seconds, until it felt as if though liquid magma was leaving her cuts and searing the rest of her face. Then, Shifu decided to make things worse by touching both of her eyes with his soaked hand, causing another flare-up of agony. Her eyes started to boil in their sockets, or at least felt as much, and that wedged scream made to tear itself out of her throat in a hoarse, almost bestial cacophony that could only be called shrill. Her eyes clenched shut, but it was futile; Shifu pulled back his hand and then his foot as Nanako tossed her head left and right, trying to shake the awful substance off of her.

The worst was yet to come, though. The steel fist rammed itself upon her defenseless pucker, smearing more of that burning pain upon the ring of flesh. Another scream left Nanako's mouth, and she clenched instinctively, yet the fist kept prodding until it managed to open it with force. At first, it could only get a single knuckle in, but it kept battering until the hole was forcibly stretched to engulf the rest of the knuckles.

Agony shot through her nerves as the instrument of torture gradually forced its way into her body, and within seconds she felt flesh tearing and being smeared in more of that foul substance. Stretched to her limit, with pain shooting back and forth from both ends, Nanako could do naught but cry, hoping her torment would end as the fist hilted itself to its false wrist. She came close, dangerously so, to falling into unconsciousness, and her body stilled accordingly…

She felt a prickling sensation at her chest, and her eyes snapped open as she felt something seep into an artery. She coughed as she saw a needle, aided by a hand, sticking out of her chest, with a clear fluid of some sort slowly being pushed into into her body. Her breath hitched haltingly as the last drop was dispensed, and the needle slowly pulled out without spilling a drop of blood. "I'm sorry, but I cannot have you faint on me yet," Shifu stated scathingly, causing Nanako to look up at him just as he tossed the needle carelessly over his shoulder. "We're just getting started, you and I."

He lifted his clean hand and rubbed at her tiny slit. Nanako whimpered, still fraught with the feeling of hellfire eating away at her body, barely registering the touch at all. Shifu probed for a moment, as if searching for something, before pulling his hand back. "Hrm…" He lifted his hand up, and Nanako squeaked when she saw his fingers were just barely dabbed in fresh blood. "It would seem you're now menstruating…" he mused, shifting his hand to wipe it upon the bed.

"M-menstru…?" Nanako croaked, her mind managing to draw a blank as the steel fist started to slowly pump back and forth, bringing forth more pain that somehow managed to dull the boiling of her eyes by a mere smidgen.

"Yes," Shifu confirmed with a nod, his eyes alight with a glow Nanako thought unnatural. His glasses caught the light, reflecting in a white sheen that almost smothered his eyes like twin blankets. "You have, effectively, transitioned into a teenager." He reached down and pulled up another object, cast iron black with a slender shaft, flat on one end with a distinct grove, and hooked with another grove upon the other end. He lifted the object high and struck at Nanako's shoulder with it.

It bruised immediately, and she yelped at the fresh wound. He struck again, angling with the flat end with a wicked smirk as it punctured the bruise and drew blood that welled up from the impact. He lifted the slender rod and struck her face with it, drawing a long scratch just on the edge of her cheekbone beneath her right eye and smearing yet more blood onto her. Another strike to her forehead, from the hooked end no less, added another bruise and cut with a metallic screech. Several strikes danced upon her, without rhyme or reason, each one bruising and splitting skin until entire parts of her body were patchworks of black, red, and white.

Nanako squirmed as Shifu brought the flat end of the tool to her slit, and hooked a tiny nub into its grove. Shifu turned the bar down, slowly toward her left leg, in turn twisting the nub and causing pain to shoot through her pelvis. Nanako threw her head back and drew agonized, shaky breaths as the first of many tears trailed down her right cheek, stinging at the wound trailing just beneath it. Shifu jerked the rod to the right with alarming swiftness, drawing more blood before sliding the nub out of the grove and beating at her groin a few times until it too boasted three clashing colors that were neither uniform nor pleasant to look at. 

Interestingly enough, Nanako started to buck her hips weakly as the tool struck her groin again and again, perhaps as a result of kinetic energy taking hold. Shifu moved to her small thighs and struck at them, being mindful of the tool that pumped its steel fist back and forth. More lacerations formed, further staining the bed with her blood, and her body with yet more bruises that would linger for quite a while. When that was done, and Nanako could not contain her bladder anymore, Shifu wasted no time throwing the tool to the furthest wall thereafter.

He smirked as his captive began sobbing and continued staining the bed until the flow betwixt her legs became a weak trickle, the agony having become too much for her by that point. "S-stop…" she pleaded, quivering and closing her eyes in an effort to stave off the pain and avoid looking at her tormentor any longer. The steel fist pulled itself out with a wet pop, letting blood flow freely and her sphincter prolapse.

"Not until you learn to _like it,_ my dear," Shifu replied, tone equal parts scathing and mocking, without the least bit of anything endearing. He picked up the last objects, and hovered over the small, almost flat breasts he had neglected until now. Nanako flinched and hiccuped as she felt metal teeth clamping onto her nipples, and did everything in her power to keep her eyes closed.

"I-it hurts… I-I'm never g-gonna like it…" Nanako complained, squirming again as she felt cold hands, one dry and the other covered in congealing liquid, squeezing and moving her small mounds and causing whatever he had put on her nipples to flail about with jerking motions. The objects swayed, slowly at first before Shifu increased his pace, causing the objects to bounce erratically.

"Mmm… you're developing nicely," Shifu muttered in appraisal, his hands letting go of the mounds to trail down her prone sides. "Too bad your new augments won't let you get any taller…"

Nanako froze at that. It took her but a second to get what he was insinuating. "I… I'm gonna be… a kid f-forever?" she muttered, her voice raising an octave higher as the hands halted at her posterior.

"... in height, yes," Shifu confirmed, smirking. "In everything else, not once I am through with you…" He started rubbing her rear, spreading the cheeks a little and causing her to twitch as her nerves screamed for a second. "Hrm… I wonder if you can take me now…"

Nanako cracked an eye open at that, seeing that he had hooked jumper cable heads to her swelling nipples. "T-take… you?" she repeated, her voice distant to her own ears and almost foreign in her own throat. Shifu responded by putting the breadpan-length object on her stomach, and she paled when she saw it was attached _to_ his groin. Its pink head, with a single hole, leered at her, veins behind that head pulsing a little in anticipation. She closed her eye again, and turned away. "I-I don't know wh-what you're…" She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Wh-what you're talking a-about…" she finished weakly.

She missed Shifu's smirk widening into a Cheshire grin, and him licking his lips eagerly. "Oh, you'll find out shortly…" he promised. Getting into position, he leaned over his victim, settling his drying hand next to her head solely for balance. Nanako felt the object prod at her slit, and tried to pull her hips back before another hand raced to her stomach and pressed firmly to keep her in place. He himself pulled back, before taking the plunge in a smooth thrust that parted her abused lips with nary an ounce of resistance.

However, he got no further than that before he found difficulty actually getting _into_ the hole those lips had concealed. The sheer difference in size made him slip this way and that, and aided by her blood of all things, only slickened the length and made him fumble. There, Nanako clenched too, only further barring entry in an attempt to keep him away from her most sacred of places. He smiled nonetheless at this, figuring this was an unspoken challenge, and kept prodding. "My, my… still holding me back," he mused with a titter. "How much longer are you going to cling to your virginity like that?"

After a few tries, he found his mark and sank in, once more stretching Nanako to her limit as his head slipped in. She thrashed a little, but his hand held her stomach in place and rendered the effort futile as another inch slipped in with a bit of resistance from the clenching. Her body tried to force him back out, but he pressed on until he felt a smaller pucker within the tunnel he had forced his way into.

Nanako simply continued to cry, and cough and sputter as she felt a new, horrid sensation pervade her senses. It felt like the fist all over again, except organic and not coated in a liquid that lit a fire upon every fiber of her being. And unlike the fist, this… thing held itself at the smaller pucker, which she did not even know existed within her own body until it had been poked. Shifu shivered, in turn rattling the object, causing something that swung between his own legs to brush up against her thighs.

She heard a husky sigh, and felt another shiver. "Mmm… tighter than Kyoko," Shifu purred, willing his body to still for a moment.

"K-Kyo… ko?" Nanako muttered, whimpering as her mind started painting horrible images of Shifu doing things to a woman with blue hair and eyes. "Wh… why h-her?"

"She, like you, misbehaved," Shifu replied bluntly. The hand on his prey's stomach trailed up, and reached to grasp her by her hair again. He jerked to reorient her scrunched face back to him, and he noted that she was drooling clear saliva, which meant her mouth had stopped bleeding for the moment. "And she had to pay her penance."

Nanako's mind went into a tizzy, and some small part of her wondered who else Shifu had visited to deliver this fresh hell upon. She imagined more women suffering the fate that was now being thrust unto her. How did they misbehave? Why? She barely understood why he was doing this to her, much less what was happening to her now. "Y-you… monster…" she hissed, clenching her teeth as she felt the hand start tugging her hair.

"You'll think twice before addressing me in such a manner. You should consider yourself lucky to even be _alive_ at this time, you little wretch," Shifu snarled, pulling at Nanako's scalp fervently as his hips began to move. She felt the object leave, and her inner walls clenching again, but when his hips smacked into hers a few more times, those same walls loosened until they were quick to admit it— _him_ —again.

The pervading feeling quickly evolved into agony as she felt his hips hit home repeatedly, each thrust going smoothly despite her resistance. In addition to that, though, her traitorous body started to react quite strangely to the movements; it started to ebb her pain, just a little more. How or why, she couldn't guess, nor did she want to guess. Perhaps it was because the only pain he was delivering to her now was in trying to scalp her with his bare hands, in addition to the movements of his body that she could not comprehend. Perhaps she was on the brink of fainting again.

Shifu drew his thrusts out for as long as he could, savoring each moment that Nanako suffered beneath him. Each whimper, each attempt to clench and push him back out, even her shaky breaths ignited several miniature fires within him. Sweat started dotting his body, dripping and landing on his hapless victim who had stopped screaming to keep herself conscious. This, in turn, landed on her dried blood and smeared it across more parts of her body, adding fresh stings to closing wounds.

Still, he tugged at her head, and managed to dislodge a few strands of hair clean off their roots. "You're the first one whose cervix I can touch," he muttered, more in appraisal than disdain. "A perfect fit…"

Nanako ignored the remark. There was little point in responding to her tormentor now; her strength was waning all over again, his thrusts became heated and swift, and her body was slowly but surely growing numb to it all. Her torturous session with Shifu would come to a close soon enough; even he had a limit somewhere in the sand, and she assumed he was close to reaching it.

Her body rippled with each impact, but even that was doing nothing to abate the settling feeling of losing herself to the growing darkness. Aside from the wet smacking, Shifu made not a sound; he was too eerily quiet and too focused to really care. He picked up his pace, hammering her fervently, stretching her again and again. Then he slowed with a chuckle as her body gave out one last quiver, though his hips kept moving in a pace so slow a snail would have been faster. "In… or out?" he asked, voice laced with exhaustion and an eagerness that could not be hidden.

Haltingly, Nanako cracked an eye open again. "Wh… wha?" she rasped, quivering as that diabolical gaze fell onto her again. She felt as if the devil's incarnate was judging her for her sins; the gaze and the matching grin gave her the vibe of such.

"In... or out?" Shifu repeated slowly, teeth glinting as he continued to smile at her.

"I-I don't…" Nanako coughed and licked her lips, but only to confirm that her mouth wasn't drying out on her. "I d-don't unders-stand…"

That raised a flag in Shifu's mind, and somehow his disconcerting grin widened substantially. "Oh well," he breathed, as his pace picked up again. "Y-your loss." With a small, almost silent grunt he stilled again after a few dozen thrusts, and Nanako squirmed as she felt him hilt inside with a new warmth flooding her being. The object within expanded just slightly, and she heard a distinct squelch, but knew not what it was.

An eternity passed after that, or at least that was an illusion Nanako wanted to break. But she couldn't, and it seemed her tormentor couldn't, either. In silence, the unholy embrace lasted for minutes, perhaps hours on end before one of them moved; it took an uncomfortably long time for Shifu to let go of her head and remove the jumper cable heads from her nipples, carelessly casting them aside. Then, he withdrew, causing… whatever he had put in her to spill out with her blood. He walked to the keypads and typed codes into them, and she noticed he was much more sluggish than he was when he was still pounding her. With a series of whirs, one by one her bonds opened up and retracted, allowing Nanako to flop onto the bed.

Even after being freed from the shackles, she did not move. Exhaustion settled in, and swiftly. Shifu threw himself into the bed and pulled the covers over himself, marveling as Nanako seemingly started to ignore everything around her. Her body was a wreck; parts swelled, oozed, leaked, and all the while her chest heaved to suck in even the tiniest bit of oxygen. Her bruises grew darker, some parts turning a very deep purplish-blue instead of black. It was as if her soul escaped through the many wounds, in fragments that each gave up and faded away without taking her body.

"Oh, my, I'm not being such a good host for leaving you exposed," Shifu purred, pulling at the blanket to dislodge it from beneath Nanako. Only when he got it to her ankles could he pull it over her prone form, which caused her to react with a feeble kick that pushed the covers back. Then she rolled off of the bed away from him, landing with a soft thud on the floor.

"N… not sl-sleeping…" she hissed, her voice but a whisper. _"N-not… sl-sleeping…"_

"Oh, still being rude, are we?" Shifu groused, sitting up before rolling to his feet and walking to where Nanako had landed. Manually, he hefted her up and threw her back on the bed before covering her up and crawling under the blankets, that time wrapping his arms and legs around her to keep her in place. "That's quite fine with me… I'm patient. You'll be a good little girl when I'm done," he cooed darkly. He leaned to whisper in her ear, _"No matter how long it takes me to sunder your spunk, as I have your innocence."_

Nanako did not move. She did not respond to that declaration. All she could do was lay there, wide awake despite being dead tired, trapped in an uncomfortable embrace she wanted desperately to get out of. Shifu fell asleep holding her, but not before clapping his hands twice, which shut off the flickering light to cast the rest of the room in darkness. She didn't want to join him in his slumber, mind still very much scrambling to make sense of what had happened. His grip tightened as he started to dream, but not enough to choke her or squeeze the air out of her lungs, just enough so that anything as slight as a twitch would inevitably alert him.

She sobbed silently as her eyes slipped shut and sleep claimed her anyway. She went out with a distinct feeling that this was only the start of her woes.


	2. Opportunity

Her sleep was dreamless and sporadic; at random intervals she'd wake up only to fall back asleep minutes later, her pain so numbingly cold she barely registered the feeling of being cradled by arms and legs not her own. Her body, though lost in such a sea of torment, was yet placed into a position where she had been rendered unable to do anything about it. This situation was one where she hated every second of it—nothing else came close to describing it. All the while, she stained the bed with her blood, which was taking her warmth with it. Paradoxically, she felt close to death, but at the same time something deep within her scrambled to hold on for dear life.

But… what was there to hold on to, here in this forsaken room? She did not answer that question, for she had no answer to even conjure. She waited, still as a statue, breathing as minimally as possible, for death to claim her.

Not many children wished to die, but she was an exception given what she had just been through. The reaper, it seemed, was holding his breath however, and so death did not claim her that night. She paid little heed to the fluids seeping from between her legs, much less the feeling of them drying and turning flaky and wet at the same frequency she woke up and went back to sleep. A hand that wasn't hers started brushing itself against her head, prodding at forming bruises, eliciting a wince so slight it seemed Nanako hadn't moved at all.

The gesture was anything _but_ comforting. It only made Nanako's stomach flip upside-down, and her wounds sting in tandem once again. She exerted a great deal of sheer willpower to keep her body from shaking, but was unable to suppress a sharp gasp as the hand on her head trailed to her chest and grabbed a small mound. She remained still, however, silently praying that Shifu would not wake up from the sound that had slipped through her mouth.

He gave a snore instead, one that rang in her ears as he continued to hold the mound. Then he pressed himself a little more close to her, his chest and stomach pressing themselves into her back. Nanako dared not relax, though, as doing that would probably send another signal to him even though he was well off into dreamland. The hand trailed lower, past her stomach and down the side of her thigh, before falling still. "... rice, damn you…" Shifu muttered, seemingly speaking to nobody.

His hips started to grind without aim, and for a moment Nanako internally shrieked as she felt his length flop about and smack her rear end. His hand grasped her thigh and lifted it up a little, as with the skill of a drunk buffoon he continued to listlessly fling his instrument about. "Mmm… soft… like a plush," he cooed, before his length poked at her prolapsed pucker.

Nanako's eyes widened, and she jerked as it slipped in. "Yes… my slave…" Shifu purred, hilting in seconds.

 _"S-slave?!"_ Nanako mentally hissed, throat drying out as another pounding started, this time in her worse-for-wear back door.

"My… plaything…" Shifu groaned, pausing for a moment after hilting in her again. "Remain in your owner's arms…" His hips began moving again, and another husky sigh left his mouth as he found himself lost in a steady rhythm. "Forever at my whim… my beck and call…"

Nanako bit her lip to avoid making a sound. Her eyes screwed shut, holding back budding tears as her tormentor sped up his ministrations. "No crying… no fighting… no screaming," Shifu went on, seemingly half-mad as he pushed as deep as he could go. "For you are _mine…_ " His thrusts started sending ripples across her little body, and she gave little more than a wince as the strange object between his legs smacked her thighs again whilst his hips repeatedly connected.

"And… I expect…" Shifu was panting now, groaning between thrusts with no hint of control over his body. It was as though he were a man possessed in slumber, which in a way wasn't particularly far-fetched if his ramblings were anything to go by. He stilled, and Nanako felt another warmth flood her and promptly spill out with a wet squelch due to her prolapse. The last coherent word that left his mouth as he pulled out was spoken in a guttural growl, _"Silence."_

Nanako shivered uncomfortably as Shifu fell still with a pleased groan. She swallowed dry air as the hand on her thigh let go and trailed back up her side before grasping her by the waist. His other hand inched up toward her mouth, and his fingers slipped inside, which gave way to a slight jerk as she tasted blood and heat smeared on their tips. He fondled her mouth for a moment, fingers slipping in and out and assaulting her taste buds with a foul and pungent mix that made her stomach flip topsy-turvy again before he removed them as well.

Nanako gave a sigh that was silent, and shuddered as Shifu loosened his hold before rolling onto his back and then away from her. Her eyes widened; he actually let go, and turned his back too! She had a chance of escape! Slowly, quietly, she rolled away from him, pausing as he started mumbling about rice again. At the edge of the bed, she sat up, her heart drumming in her chest once again as she heard and felt bones pop with another groan. Her feet touched the floor, numb yet steady as she slid down the side of the bed to kneel at its side.

With a wince, she trudged to the door… on both her hands and knees. She could not risk falling, and as much of her body had lost feeling that was returning with a new wave of pain, this was the only way to really safely go about this. She inched to the steel door, feeling blood and that foul warmth whose name she couldn't place trickle from her abused holes and trail down her legs, but she cared not for that. A fire filled her, an opportunity presented itself, and she'd be damned if she didn't take it now.

Thankfully, Shifu stayed in bed, snoring like a bear in hibernation as the door hissed open to let her out. Nanako crawled into the hall outside, finding a great steel thing spanning either side of her, framed with pale blue lines that pulsed with electricity which illuminated her surroundings. As soon as the door closed behind her, she rose to stand on shaky legs, only to stumble and end up catching herself as she slipped on a small puddle of her blood.

She stood up again and hastily trudged down the left side of the hall, keeping her steps wide for balance and her hands unconsciously lifting themselves to cover her more private areas. When enough feeling returned to her body, she broke into a harried and barely-coordinated sprint that took her for a good one hundred yards and down five different corridors before her legs gave out and she stopped at an intersection.

Panting with exertion, Nanako paused to look around to try and figure out where in the hell she was, as she didn't bother to look during her run. Four different arrows pointed down the halls, each one marked with words aplenty. Her eyes gravitated between the arrows, before settling onto the one upon her immediate right. "The… medical bay…" she wheezed, and immediately wheeled into that hall in a slow jog. "N-need to… g-get…"

Her vision began to blur and fade again as she traversed down the hall, and immediately after the world began spinning uncontrollably. She stopped and leaned against a wall, whimpering as agony flared anew as she had the absence of mind to use her wounded shoulder for support. Colors started fading into grey, but not before she heard the sound of footsteps clicking against steel.

Her heart drummed faster. Had Shifu woken up and caught up with her already? _"Please, Guardian God, don't let it be him…"_ she mentally whined, stifling hiccups as another fresh wave of tears started to form. The footsteps grew nearer, louder, echoing about more and more with each and every beat. Whoever owned the steps did not speak, and for a moment Nanako came close to losing control of her bladder again.

The Guardian God she prayed to, however, heard her then and gave an answer that she hadn't expected; two people rounded the corner on the opposite side of the hall, both seemingly wearing dresses with tall frames to hold them. One had blue hair and eyes, and oval-rimmed glasses framing a slender face, whilst the other had short red hair and eyes with a voluptuous bosom and hips that would doubtless be the envy of many a girl.

Nanako's eyes widened in recognition, even as color drained from the world and the pair's features turned fuzzy. They stopped, merely a yard from her, and both gave sharp feminine gasps that made a tired smile break out onto her face. "K-Kae… K-Kyo… ko…" she croaked just as her feet slipped from under her, and she fell to the floor slumped against the wall. She heard running, felt two pairs of arms cradling her, but did not fight it as she was shifted to lean with her back.

"Oh dear, N-Nanako, what happened?!" one of the people barked, her voice clear as crystal and just as riddled with alarm. "Y-you're losing blood! A-and what is that… mixing with the blood?!"

"Less talking, more helping!" the other woman snapped, her voice brash and shrill as she slipped her arms under Nanako's legs and behind her back. "She's in no condition to even be walking, Kyoko!"

Kyoko promptly snapped back, "But if we don't figure out what happened, it could happen again! We'll need to stop whatever happened at its source, Kae!"

"After we stop her fucking bleeding!" Kae hissed, hefting Nanako up effortlessly. "At this rate, she could die on us! _Look at her!_ How did she manage movement as bad as this?!"

Kyoko paused, having to concede Kae's point. "Very well then." She hovered over Nanako as she and Kae walked down the hall they had come from. "Nanako, can you hear me?" she asked.

Nanako managed a lazy nod. "... just... f-fine," she rasped. "C-cold…" she muttered as her eyes closed, and darkness took her once again. Though as consciousness left her, she noticed she was very violently jostled about, accompanied by the sounds of two sets of feet going from a walk into a harried and stomping sprint.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

An indeterminate amount of time after fainting had passed, and Nanako cracked her eyes open as a steady beep filled the air, immediately finding a dark grey room aglow with white lights. White curtains surrounded her on all sides, and she noticed a warmth about it which did not come from another living being, and a feeling of a mattress beneath her as well as a pillow which hugged her body. A soft groan left her mouth, and her eyes darted about, catching sight of metal bars forming a frame beyond her reach, and IV stands and IV bags with tubes leading to…

Her eyes shifted again after a lengthy pause to consider the IV bags, to bandaged hands resting atop a thick blanket pulled up to her collarbone, whose wrists were where the tubes ended. Past the curtains, she could not see outside into the room she now lay. She still recognized it for what it was, though, and gave a small smile at that fact. This time, she opted to just lay down and take it easy, though the pain in her body did not necessarily ebb with her decision. In fact, it flared once again, reminding her that her little stunt wasn't such a good idea to have pulled off.

However, she could give less of a shit about that; she managed to get away from Shifu, who was probably still asleep or wondering where in hell she was, and that was all that mattered. And now that she was effectively away from that crazy bastard, she lazily turned her head to the side and made to sink deeper into the bed, savoring the feeling of being left to her own devices for once. Though, she did wonder about the incessant beeping that sang in the air.

Oh well. She elected to ignore it, and tried to go back to sleep before the sound of a door hissing open filled the room, briefly drowning out that beeping. Two sets of footsteps, now accompanied by clinking glass, filled the room before the curtains were parted from her left and two women stepped inside, one carrying a tray with bowls and a glass of water. Both women were slender, and one was wearing a thick coat over a dress with blue hair and eyes, while the other opted for a black shirt with a white heart and a brown skirt with flaming red hair and eyes. The woman in said brown skirt also sported conical protrusions in place of her ears, with holes at their ends that Nanako assumed would let her hear.

Both smiled warmly, but worriedly at her. "Hey," the red-head greeted, setting the tray in Nanako's lap.

Nanako idly nodded. "H-hey Kae," she replied, turning to the tray to find a small assortment of foodstuffs laid before her. A medium-sized bowl of oats sat with a small spoon impaled in it and a few pieces of toast sitting off to the side, topped off with a hearty glass of iced water that was amusingly adorned with a lemon wedge. The toast glistened a little in the light, and the smell of butter and cinnamon wafted in the air and made her mouth water. "I-I don't… feel much l-like moving. B-but thank you," she cooed as her stomach rumbled.

Kae gave an uneasy, shaky laugh at that. "Didn't think you'd be up for it," she replied, grabbing a piece of toast and bringing it to Nanako's mouth. Her smile widened as she took a hefty bite out of it, and started chewing with abandon. Before she swallowed, Nanako took two more bites, leaving just a cornerpiece in Kae's hand as she greedily devoured the toast.

"She's starved, Kyoko," Kae muttered as Nanako swallowed the bits of toast and used her teeth to snatch the cornerpiece right out of her hand, dragging it into her hungering maw without restraint.

"Very," Kyoko agreed with a worried nod. "So soon after being augmented, too…" Kae nodded and lifted another piece of toast to Nanako's waiting mouth, and frowned as she took that and lifted one of her hands to stuff the entire thing in. "Hold her head up, she'll need a drink." Another mute nod answered her, and Kae slipped a hand under Nanako's head before tenderly pushing her to sit up once the second piece of toast went down the gullet in a loud gulp.

Kyoko herself grasped the glass of ice water and lifted it to Nanako's mouth. Immediately, lips graced the cooled rim and started sucking in faintly lemony liquid eagerly, soothing her mouth and throat with a wetness she very much needed. Before she could inhale half of the glass's contents, though, it was retracted to be replaced with the final piece of toast. Nanako bit down again, a little more sluggishly now that she had some food in her stomach, but still managed to finish it off within minutes.

"Easy on the chow," Kae pleaded as she picked up the bowl of oats and the spoon it came with. "Want the oatmeal now, or later?"

Nanako pondered for a moment, before shaking her head. "Later… was gonna sleep," she muttered in reply. Kae nodded and set the bowl and spoon down again, before retracting her hand from the back of Nanako's head and deftly picking the tray up. Kyoko moved to hold Nanako's head in her stead, if only to help her finish drinking her lemon water. She drank the rest, and then pulled in an ice cube with her tongue before letting it melt in her mouth with a sigh of contentment. Kyoko lowered her head and pulled the glass away, tilting her own head as Nanako flopped on the bed, closed her eyes and shifted her cheeks a little to let the melting ice cube slosh about.

Within minutes, the ice cube finished melting, and Nanako swallowed it down. "Any… news?" she asked, her voice less raspy now that she had sufficient food and drink.

"Plenty. So don't fall asleep on me yet," Kyoko replied, her voice grim. At Nanako's nod, she took a deep breath and lifted a hand to pull her glasses off to wipe them against her sleeve. She continued to clean them as she started, "Firstly, we found evidence of prolapse and… minor genital mutilation. You will have to undergo surgery to fix those, which means you're staying in bed for a month at least. Second, we have… taken samples of the strange substance we found in your blood. It will be a while before we can test them, seeing as your health is my and Kae's main concern."

Nanako nodded, silently bading Kyoko to continue. Continue, she did, "Third… we have decided to avoid asking you questions in regards as to what had happened; you're barely in any condition to talk, so that will have to wait. Take as long as you need to gather yourself, because we _will_ want the entirety of what happened before we can nip that problem in the bud." At that, Nanako heaved an internal sigh of relief; the less prodding, literal and metaphorical, the better. Some part of her dreaded that talk, though, and she gave a slight wince at the thought. "Lastly, we found a planet, capable of housing and providing for live inhabitants. We landed on its surface while you were out, and are adjusting to its atmosphere before we send out the reconnaissance crew to see if there are any inhabitants on this world already present."

A planet? Nanako blinked and stared at Kyoko with eyes going round as she finished cleaning, then put her glasses back on. "W-we… h-home?" she croaked.

Kyoko nodded. "Possibly, yes," she replied smoothly, donning a small smile. "We won't have to be on this stuffy vessel for much longer. Just hold out and preserve your strength, and we'll let you run freely in its fields before you know it."

Nanako gave a small, genuine laugh at that. Some part of her wondered if Kyoko was bribing her, but that inner child practically screamed with glee at the notion. She could get further away from Shifu! But… where would she go? What now waited beyond her bed? Her mind started running wild, painting vivid images aplenty. At this, she gave another nod, and Kyoko's smile widened.

At least, now she _had_ something to look forward to.


	3. Shrieking of Railings

Shifu awoke and sat up in bed, glasses askew and hair even _more_ tangled than before. He took a moment to adjust his glasses with a grunt, then scanned the room, his hand starting to paw at his side. There was a dent in the bed… a dent at his side, and nothing more. It took a whole minute for his sleep-fogged mind to register the fact, but when it did his eyes bulged and he clapped his hands to turn the light on before he twitchingly turned to the dent.

Nanako was _gone._ A quick scan of the room confirmed she was nowhere in sight. He hopped out of bed and knelt to look under it. That hiding spot was empty. One peek in the closet led to another empty space. Blood rushed to his brain, and a surge of anger spiked in his system, kicking the last remnants of the sleep-fog right to the curb in the process. "Why you little…" he growled, before something started to play a tarantella with his nerves. His length twitched—painfully.

Burning heat overtook him, spreading from his groin, and at once that initial tarantella devolved into an outright hammering of searing pain that drummed at him from all angles. His eyelid twitched, and his gaze gravitated down, mind boggling as he struggled to comprehend why the pain had hit him now.

Dark red, with flecks of lighter red and white, smeared his length. And just about everywhere else around it, for that matter. It even managed to wrap around one of his sides, curiously avoiding the other. This substance had formed a flaky crust which hugged his body rather loosely, already fragmenting and breaking up as his length twitched again. "What the…" he muttered, lifting a hand to smear the flaky substance across the tip of his finger. Lifting a few of the dried bits to his mouth, he gave a hesitant lick.

Heat started dancing on his tongue upon contact. In one second, he understood what was happening. His pupils shrank as he struggled to comprehend how this mixture could have gotten all over him. He made damn sure to _not_ use that hole whilst he was awake, after so thoroughly destroying it with a metal fist. But then, how did this substance get all over him despite that? When? How bad would the damage be?

The heat grew, until his nerves burned in white hot agony. Stifling a pained groan, he raced to the drawer of the nearest nightstand and threw it open, hands sinking into its contents, digging haphazardly, hurriedly trying to find something to abate his pain. But after a few minutes, nothing turned up, so he slammed the drawer and stormed to his desk to search for something. He started with the drawers on the bottom.

Another drawer opened, and his eyes lit up as he found a small metal box with a red cross on it. He pulled it out, threw it on the floor, and opened it to find an assortment of gel tubes lined in neat little rows within. He dug through them, carefully this time, scanning each label until he found what he was looking for.

He pulled the tube he selected out, then returned to his desk to search for more things, this time from its shelves. He did need to clean himself, after all, before the burning could be treated. Within seconds, he pulled off another set of objects from the top of the shelves, a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and a simple washcloth.

He dabbled the washcloth generously with the alcohol, and started to vigorously scrub off the residue. "Of all the things I could have done but shouldn't've…" he grumbled as the residue came off easily. In seconds, he cleaned away what he could visibly see, and doubled back to what he couldn't as a precaution. Then he unscrewed the bottle of gel and squeezed every last drop out, smearing it quite frantically on himself, smiling as it started to ebb the burning sensation. It did not remove it outright, but for the moment made it more bearable to actually tolerate. He noted it did not burn inside as it did out, but he decided he wasn't going to take chances today.

"Note to self: no more hot sauce in fuckable orifices," he groused as he put the bottle of alcohol, the now-dirtied washcloth and the small box of tubes back where he had found them. When that was done, he threw open another drawer and pulled out a few clothes; namely black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a white long coat. He threw them on, hastily, before pulling out some socks and shoes to go with them. He barely bothered to keep himself from dressing with clothes wrong-side out and backwards, less so with addressing the tangled heap of hair on his head, and turned to the steel door once he was fully dressed and decent.

He noticed a trail in the carpet, leading to that steel door, almost immediately. "How nice of you to lead me on, you little slut," he growled, smirking diabolically nonetheless. Slowly, he walked, following the trail into the hall beyond, only to find a teenage girl whose head merely reached his chest height-wise, standing at the leftmost bend, head down as if studying something on the ground. She had short blond hair, tied into a low ponytail, with gold eyes to match and a yellow raincoat over her body. He affected an expression of soured indifference when he saw her, and took a moment to collect himself just to make that expression stick. "Saki, what are you doing?" he asked.

Saki jumped in place, before standing quite rigidly to attention. "I-I was told to help th-the janitor drones," she stammered weakly.

Shifu walked over, glasses glinting and one brow raised high. "How, exactly?" he asked.

"B-by marking anything th-that needs to be c-cleaned," Saki answered, lifting one hand to gesture at the ground. Shifu let his gaze gravitate to her hand, seeing a small glowing square-shaped device affixed to the floor, right next to yet more erratic flecks of crimson. He nodded and looked back at her.

"Very well then. Proceed." Shifu turned and walked back to his room, striding inside and making a beeline straight for the keypads on the bed. He typed codes hastily into the pads, and the bed responded by sliding a door open and lifting a small microphone to his face. "System, deny access to anyone except me and those who accompany me to my bedroom. Likewise, any who are in my room without me must not be allowed to leave, provided I accompanied them inside."

 _"Request granted,"_ a robotic voice droned in reply. Shifu relaxed and strode back out of the room, hearing gears grind and tumblers lock as the door closed behind him.

Just in time, too. Saki was following the trail… and damn near bumped into him. She stiffened when she noticed him, and turned to look in his eyes. "S-sorry, sir," she muttered.

"It's quite alright. You're just helping the drones," Shifu answered, his voice cold and flat. With that he walked around her and started following the trail again, rounding the bend only to pause when he heard something banging against steel. He peered past the corner, leaning just enough that nobody would notice, and smirked as he saw Saki pawing at his bedroom door. But as she hit and kicked and kneed and elbowed, the door refused to budge.

"Locks are a wonderful thing indeed," he muttered to himself before turning back to the trail and following it. "I'll do my own laundry, on my own damn time." He came across an intersection at twenty yards, leading to three halls with multiple doors with people going in and out of them. He paid little heed to the other folks, some cowering away from him and others donning looks of confusion. He had a runaway girl to catch, and a burn to address.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Nanako tossed in bed, eyes scrunched shut as frantic whimpers left her mouth. Her face blanched, her mutterings were indecipherable, and the blanket was doing little to keep her warm. This fitful sleep lasted for a whole hour before she awoke with a jolt and a strangled scream leaving her throat. She sat bolt upright, fresh tears dotting her face as she drew shaky breaths. The sound of footsteps reached her ears, the curtains at her side parted, and Kyoko rushed in wide-eyed and alarmed. "What was that about?" Kyoko asked, frowning.

"I-I-I-I…" Nanako stammered, pausing to cough and hiccup. She froze momentarily when she realized she had nary a clue where to even _begin._ Her mind reeled, turning over the events which had happened before she left that accursed bedroom, and slowly her shaking hands rose to cover her bandaged chest. "I-I…"

Warmth was leaving her again, as once more her mind replayed the horrors she had to endure. Her pupils shrank as more tears left her eyes. There were things she still couldn't grasp, things well beyond her understanding, and thus could not describe. She felt something leaving her, something _evading_ her, but what?

More than anything else, a new found urge to scream asserted itself. But, were she to scream, then Shifu might be in earshot and…

Shifu.

Pain.

_Shifu._

_Pain._

With a choked sob, she cradled herself in her arms and started to rock back and forth, legs pulling themselves up to her chest and dragging the blanket with. Kyoko's brow furrowed, though only slightly, and she approached Nanako with arms spread. "I… I d-don't… know what… h-happened," Nanako managed, before burying her face in her knees with a strangled hiccup.

"You… don't know?" Kyoko repeated, leaning over to gently wrap her arms around the little girl. She frowned when that got a flinch and a tensing of muscles, before Nanako shook her head with a sniffle. Then, the rest of her body trembled as the crying started anew.

"D-don't know…" Nanako croaked, her whole body aching all over again. Those two little, seemingly insignificant, yet truly damning words echoed about in her skull, only amplifying the pain as tears began staining the blanket and her bandages. One tear made it into her mouth, gracing her tongue with a bitter saltiness that made her stomach travel up her throat with another awful sensation that felt as though her insides caught flame once again.

She stopped sobbing for long enough to swallow it back down. Her stomach complied with a gurgle, but the rest of her body didn't. Each sting, aging by now, held with it the same intensity as when it was first formed. Old bruises twitched erratically; perhaps 'spasming' would have been a better word, for she could not contain them. Her nub ground uncomfortably, and her prolapse clenched with a pulse of aching flesh.

She couldn't start to explain this fresh hell, for she knew not the words which would have fit them, nor the sensations to which they aptly belonged. She couldn't even figure out _why_ it had happened to her, much less if there was a reason to begin with. "You've been absent these past two weeks… where were you?" Kyoko asked gently, hoping to get something out of Nanako.

All that did was bring up more memories Nanako couldn't smother, yet wanted to be rid of. She started to emit muffled screams into the blanket, which made Kyoko jump back in surprise. _"I-I don't know!"_ she replied, voice raspy and somewhat muted. The crying continued, even as Kyoko moved to hug her again.

Kyoko closed her eyes and lifted a hand, gently running it through Nanako's hair. That garnered a flinch, but Nanako eased, and her sobbing hushed a little as she felt soft fingers dancing upon her scalp. It made the pain go away a little more, yet failed to stop it entirely. Nanako leaned into the touch and the embrace, itself another small comfort that she did not want to yield. She shakyily sighed, and slowly her crying waned until silence permeated the room. Her knees sank into the bed, and her arms parted from her own chest to shift their hold onto Kyoko, who was more than happy to gently rock back and forth with her.

Some small part of Nanako wondered if, perhaps, Kyoko understood on some level what she was going though. Shifu's rather crass remark about her bounced in her head, before the thought was caged and subsequently kicked to the mental curb. It was likely, yes, but also just as probable that he'd merely said that to get to her. If such was the case, Nanako prayed to the Guardian God that Kyoko would never have to endure that hell.

Eventually, Nanako spoke, her voice once more hoarse, "Wh-where'd Kae g-go?"

"She's with the reconnaissance crew," Kyoko replied in a soft voice. "She'll be back before nightfall." Nanako nodded with a small, dry groan. "Are you… going to be alright?" she asked.

Nanako gave a shrug. "Wish I-I knew," she muttered sincerely. "C-can you g-get me a b-book?"

Kyoko nodded and pulled away. "What sort?" she asked.

"Something… w-with augments?" Nanako replied, shifting to lay down.

"With… oh. You want to get to know your augments better," Kyoko muttered, garnering a nod from Nanako. "Alright, that makes sense. I'll also get you a dictionary, in case you find a word you don't know."

Nanako managed a small smile at that. "I-I can handle a d-dictionary," she chirped. Kyoko giggled a bit and patted her tenderly on the head, then parted the curtains to start scouring for the requested books. The curtains closed behind her right as the door to the room hissed open, followed by footsteps and an exasperated groan from Kyoko which made Nanako's smile fall.

Before she could wonder why Kyoko made such a noise, a voice she did _not_ want to hear flooded the room. "Kyoko, I would like to seek treatment," Shifu stated in an authoritative tone.

"Treatment for _what?_ " Kyoko groused, her tone taking on a note of agitation.

"A little… accident I had, during my most recent tenure of research," Shifu replied smoothly. Nanako sank into her bed, shivering and stifling her whimpers as she heard Kyoko sigh in irritation.

 _"Please don't look please don't look please don't look…"_ Nanako mentally prayed, willing her body to still as footsteps echoed beyond the curtains. She saw shadows moving, both familiar, yet… heading away from her. She heard another parting of curtains, followed by the sound of someone sitting on a soft surface.

"Alright… what have you done this time?" Kyoko groused, a soft growl lacing her voice.

"Well, I was researching a peculiar chemical… and I had the unfortunate absence of mind to pour it into another chemical that was particularly volatile," Shifu began. "Magnesium and ammonia, you must understand… and, the beaker exploded on me and got all over…"

 _"Liar,"_ Nanako mentally hissed as Shifu blathered on for a full minute after, tuning out the rest of what he was saying.

"I see," Kyoko stated blandly, her voice managing to pierce through the veil of selective listening Nanako subjected herself to. "Have you applied ointments?"

"Yes, I have. I was lucky enough to escape without the beaker's shards slicing into me, and I thoroughly cleaned my afflicted area before applying the ointments," Shifu replied in earnest. "Is there anything else you would recommend me doing?"

Kyoko went eerily silent for a long moment. "Have… any of the chemicals gotten into your…" she began.

"Yes. Burns inside as it does out," Shifu confirmed.

Kyoko groaned, still not bothering to hide her exasperation. "You will need an injection to take care of that…" she muttered. "I'll send for a drone. I'll need to get something else for another patient, anyway." With that, Nanako heard the sound of footsteps echoing, stopping only when the door hissed open. An uncomfortable silence fell, and Nanako resisted the urge to get up and run. Instead, she turned her head and closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep.

For a long while, silence reigned. Neither party made a move, one merely being patient and the other playing possum whilst mentally praying to the Guardian God and hoping that her tormentor would not notice her presence. Then, Shifu spoke, more to himself than anybody else who could have been in that room, "What should I research next?"

 _"How about you send yourself into hell? Do the world a favor and just drop already,"_ Nanako mentally snarked. She noted that silence once again fell after Shifu had spoken, and considered the possibility that they were the only ones in the room. Then, she heard someone standing up, parting curtains, and footsteps echoing about the room—all without the door hissing open.

Slowly, two steps echoed per five seconds. The sounds seemed to dance around the room, rendering the noise impossible to gauge location-wise; it may well have come from everywhere at once. It sounded again, and again, before pausing in a tense silence followed by a second rustling of curtains that were a little muted. "Nobody's in this bed…" Shifu muttered.

Nanako's heart shot up her throat, stifling another whimper. The footsteps resumed, each beat on the floor making fear spike through her mind and pain cloud her nerves, only stopping a half-second later when a more muffled parting of curtains graced her ears. "Not in this one, either…" Shifu said, his voice carrying across the room. "Surely, I'm not the only one _here…_ am I? Surely, I have been _deceived…?_ "

Nanako's lips trembled. The footsteps started growing louder, yet their pace, their rhythm did not change. She opened her eyes, and her pupils shrank as a shadow swam into view on the other side of the curtains. She could feel him gazing through the curtain, straight at her, and her fingers shook. "That's strange, there's nobody in this bed, yet there are IV stands here… and these curtains are a little thinner than the standard," Shifu noted, before the footsteps grew quieter and the shadow became less defined. "Perhaps my eyes have played a trick of the light on me. I'll have to examine the others first to confirm this…"

Another set of curtains rustled, twice over, and both times they gave metallic cries that made goosebumps shoot across Nanako's body. "Empty." The footsteps softened, only stopping when more curtains parted. "Likewise." The process repeated for a few minutes, and each pause made dread spike in Nanako's little body. Shifu took his sweet, sweet time, rustling curtains seemingly without rhyme nor reason. Perhaps he had truly thought she was elsewhere, but wanted to be certain of that hunch first, if such was the case.

Or was he looking for someone else? There was that possibility, too. But if so… then who had slighted him _now?_ Why? How? Nanako stiffened, mentally praying to the Guardian God to bless that person, to protect them so they wouldn't suffer in his company. She heard more curtains part, followed by more footsteps, yet for a few minutes Shifu had not spoken a word. Her stomach flipped at his silence, unable to decide which way to go, as the maddening tune of his feet hitting the floor continued unhindered.

It took not a minute after three more curtains were parted did Nanako receive her answer—an answer she quickly came to regret silently asking for. "Oh Nana-kooooooo?" Shifu sang, his voice sickeningly sweet for but a second, uttered in a falsetto that made Nanako cringe. More curtains parted. "Are you…" Footsteps filled in the void as he paused, whistling a soft tune now. _"Here?"_ he growled as another set of curtains were thrown wide open. The whistling stopped. "Where aaaaaaaaaaaaaaare yooooooooooooou?" he sang again, still walking calmly about the room, throwing curtains open and then closing them with diligence. "Someone told me you were carried here by Kae…"

Nanako pressed her legs tightly together. Someone had ratted Kae out? Bile rose in her throat as she heard more curtains get yanked open, that time with enough force to skitter violently. "Surely, you're… _trapped_ here, no?" Shifu asked, as if expecting an answer. She gave him none; hopefully, he'd go away, or Kyoko would return and put an end to his antics. But the more she heard him walk, the more she heard him fling open the curtains, the less likely that possibility became.

"Nana-koooooooo…" Shifu sang in that terrible falsetto again. "Tell your Uncle Shifu where you're…" Another set of curtains went wide. _"Hiding,"_ he stated in a sibilant hiss that rang in her ears despite being uttered nowhere near her. Nanako silently swallowed the bile climbing up her throat, as the footsteps echoed much more harshly, in tandem with the sound of flung curtains. Tears welled in her eyes as pain shot through her body again, this time as if warning her to _run._

But where would she run, with IV tubes attached to her? Where would she hide? How much longer would her body hold out, were she to bolt here and now? Who'd spot her if she ran, and then tell Shifu her whereabouts? These musings, unanswered, effectively kept her to her bed, for they made her mental gears stall with indecision. "It's amazing how you couldn't clean up after yourself…" Shifu remarked, throwing yet more curtains wide to find a bed that wasn't her's. "You've painted a target on your tender little ass… why is that, I wonder?" he mused, voice laced with a sickly, perverse mirth that made Nanako wince.

"Do you secretly _enjoy_ the time we spend together? Is that why you leave obvious tracks when you hide, and run to the most obvious of places if the drones clean up your messes first—so I can find you?" Shifu asked, still receiving no answer. Nanako froze when he uttered those questions, though. She recalled bleeding when she left his room, and slowly she blanched when she understood what he was talking about. But he hadn't found her… yet. The hunt had only just begun.

One set of curtains parted with a screech of metal. At this, a pregnant pause fell upon the room. "Hrm… this patient has died. Looks like we'll have to incinerate this one…" Shifu muttered, before curtains slid shut and he resumed walking. "But that's not _my_ problem…" More curtains were thrown open, followed by a snort. The footsteps grew fainter, and fainter, as did the rustling, but Nanako still couldn't bring herself to relax; before much longer, he'd doubtless double back. Dread spiked in her body again, and her legs pressed tighter against each other, until they started to hurt.

The footsteps and rustling became increasingly faster in pace after a few minutes, from five seconds per two steps to a mere half-second per two steps, and during that time Shifu went quiet again. She shuddered, and a tiny, almost inaudible gasp of fear wormed its way out of her mouth as the devil's incarnate continued his sweep of the medical bay. Whether or not Shifu had heard the sound mattered little; it was either lost amidst his own footsteps and curtain-parting, or he wasn't close enough to register it. Nanako swallowed a small lump of dry air. She couldn't tell what was worse: that both of them had to be in the medical ward for one reason or another, or that she could do nothing but wait. Shifu was tragically right: Nanako found herself trapped, ironically enough, in a public place.

"Nana-kooooooooo…" Shifu called, and were he an octave higher, he could have shattered glass, provided that there were any shards thereof present. As it was, he only sounded more and more demonic to her panicking mind. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…" he cooed, only to be answered with silence. His fervor increased in tempo, and his rhythm changed; he went from two medium-paced steps to six rapid stomps in a heartbeat, and the sound of clanging metal graced Nanako's ears immediately between the bouts of curtain-rustling. Her eyes darted, and she only noticed now that an incessant beeping no longer sang in the air. She couldn't dwell on that, however, for she heard the sound of curtains parting again, now ear-piercingly loud and shrill, as if the curtains themselves were protesting.

"I just want to play with you a little more…" Shifu beckoned, voice oozing in that putrefying mirth that made her stomach twist again. His steps slowed again, to that tune of two beats per five seconds, as a dark chuckle left his mouth. He almost sounded slightly hysterical now—almost. Curtains parted again, and a lengthy pause followed wherein neither made a move. "Maybe… ram you all over again, riiiiight between your slender little legs…" he cooed, garnering a wince from his still-hiding victim.

He started walking again, his steps slowing further to a mere shuffle per two seconds. Yet this new tune wasn't any less maddening; if anything, it made Nanako's heart drum faster in her chest as adrenaline surged through her veins and bade that she get the hell out of here. "And you seemed to like it when… I did that," he taunted, chuckling again. Nanako felt more bile rising up her throat at that, and tried to reel in her tears before they could fall. She swallowed again, but could not stop the first tear from streaking her face as more curtains were thrown wide with another hellish screech that made goosebumps break out across her body. "You liked it when you took me, didn't you?"

Nanako stifled a hiccup, but only barely. Her body ached at the reminder of last night's hell. "But of course, any girl would, if her buttons are pressed juuuuust right," Shifu continued, throwing more curtains aside. He didn't seem to have heard her muffled gasp, and simply kept on walking. "You like the pain… don't you? Is that why you came for your Uncle Shifu?" he mused, panting with budding laughter that had yet to leave his lungs. This only made him sound like he was prepared to snap and lunge, and beat her senseless all over again. Which, in all honesty, she had expected a monster like him to do...

Why, then, did he drag this maddening serenade out? Why not cut to the chase? It would be quicker that way, and yet, would not have made this hell any better nor different. Was it some perverse enjoyment, that feeling of power when one was on the hunt? Or did it make his victories over her much more sweeter? Nanako didn't know. She didn't want to find out what his motives were; all she knew was that Shifu was a monster in human form, and she could **not** attract that monster here and now. _"No, please… not again…"_ Nanako mentally whimpered, resisting the urge to clasp her hands together and pray to the Guardian God. _"Just leave me alone…"_

His steps kept growing louder, as did the shrieking of the curtains, themselves seemingly wailing as the monster opened and closed them as he pleased. "Is my little plaything troubled? Is that why she's silent, if she's here?" Shifu wondered aloud, chuckling again. He only grew more deranged with each word he spoke, his voice burning in her ears and echoing against the walls like broiling, smouldering whispers of damnation, "Oh, tell me what's bothering you, my dear. I promise I'll _fix_ it, whatever it is." His laughter echoed, swarming about the room from everywhere at once, and though it was brief it managed to freeze Nanako's heart right where it was for the barest of instants. To her, it was a series of cruel lashes from that wicked two-headed tool, each echo worse than the last.

Nanako almost retched, but mustered the willpower to keep still and her stomach down. _"Just go away…"_ she mentally protested.

"Nana-koooooooooo?" Shifu sang once more, in that falsetto that made her heart race up her throat. Another curtain screamed as he parted it, and another tear trailed down her face to hit her pillow. "Do you want to cuddle?" Nanako almost gagged again, eyes widening and pain dancing upon her nerves at the offer. She still dared not move, however; hoping against hope that he'd just go away already.

The maddening tune carried on, each and every note causing Nanako to silently quiver. She could almost _sense_ him getting closer, and at once phantom touches and sensations sparked across her form. All the while, Shifu kept checking the beds, throwing curtains wide and closing them without care. She dared not wonder who would yield first at this rate, and prayed Kyoko would get back soon.

"If you're here, then color me shocked; you're not screaming or crying," Shifu mused as he kept searching for her. "I'd have expected another unsightly bout of struggling… are you submitting already, even though I haven't touched a hair on your pretty little head today?" Nanako failed to answer, blinking a few times with pupils dilating. The tears dried, yet still stung at her eyes as he went on his merry way in an effort to locate her. This bastard did not know how to yield, exhaustion notwithstanding. "Do you want me to—" He started chuckling, and this time he was being outright hysterical about it. Nanako wasn't sure, nor did not want to find out as to why he was overtaken by that perverse mirth again, "—aha, ahaha, **take** you once again? Fill you to the—ahaha!—brim? I'll do it as many times as you want… ahaha! And I'll keep doing it as many times as I please!"

 _"I'd rather get stuck in an air duct,"_ Nanako thought, her heart trying and failing to get out of her throat. Her organs continued to squirm at the thought, the mere mention of that foul and horrid warmth sending more aches throughout her addled system. She wanted, more than anything else, to cover her ears and block his questions out. But she couldn't; that would just make him arrive faster and torment her for that much longer. She hated her helplessness, hated that she was trapped, hated _him_ most of all, but could not do anything about it. Her nerves screamed for retribution, but her body had no means with which to enact it. The more he laughed and called to her, the more her burning hatred for him grew.

Shifu's laughter died as his feet started making six beats a second again, and all the while he parting curtains with an increased frequency. "Oh, it'll make you feel positively good to be in my arms again, you little hussy," he teased, though there was nothing noble or holy about that declaration. "I'm sure you'll like taking me before long." He paused, steps and rustling halting outright for several long seconds. His voice dropped to a sibilant monotone as he gave another threat, "Maybe I'll start having you… _clean_ my groin with your tongue after I **take** you… and fill you..."

Nanako gagged again, yet impressively managed to keep her stomach in check with another mute swallow. She dared not imagine whatever the hell _that_ meant, and winced when he started walking again. "But of course… you'd need to be a baaaaad little girl to get that punishment, unless… that's what you want?" he questioned, still sounding slightly hysterical as he pressed on in spite of not receiving an answer. "Because right now, Nanako, you're being a **baaaaad** little girl… and baaaaad little girls don't get rewarded, do they?"

She saw light dancing around something outside of her feeble barricade, forming an indistinct blot that seemed to hover over something. Curtains shrieked again as they were closed, followed by a snort of indifference. Then, step by step, his shadow returned and became clearer, stopping mere feet in front of her beyond the curtains. Her eyes closed immediately, and she affected a look of peaceful sleep, but not fast enough to avoid seeing a hand grasping at the curtain's edge, just careful enough to keep the very tips off of the covering.

Slowly, the curtain was drawn in a screech of protest. A shadow cast itself over Nanako. All the while, her mind reeled and screamed, as did her nerves, for her to get out of bed and run as fast as she could. She heard footsteps, growing louder for a moment before stopping again. "Oh there you are," Shifu cooed darkly, drilling into her with his cold, demonic gaze. "I've been _looking_ for you since this morning, you naughty girl…"

Nanako didn't respond. She hoped, frantically, that he would not put his grimy hands on her again. But alas, she felt a hand come to rest on her neck, and the one thing she could not will to stop was her pulse, which was going two miles a minute. "Ohoho, you're quite… _tense…_ want me to remedy that for you, my dear?" Shifu asked tauntingly as he retracted his hand.

She felt a hand press into the mattress, right in front of her face, as Shifu loomed over her. Another hand slowly pulled the blanket down, exposing her body once again. "Hrm? And who patched you up?" he asked, a hint of surprise edging into his cold voice. Nanako kept her mouth shut, even as a hand that wasn't hers started trailing across her stomach again. The bandages mitigated the feeling, but could not entirely prevent her from registering it.

He prodded at her pelvis with a hand, causing Nanako to acknowledge the sensation of bandages that had been placed there. "Have I been too harsh?" he asked, without an iota of sincerity in his voice. His fingers slipped between her legs, eliciting a wince that Nanako couldn't hide fast enough. "Oh, good, you're awake," her tormentor cooed with a bit of appraisal.

"Don't worry your pretty little head," Shifu stated as his fingers delved deeper, though his tone was not comforting in the slightest. "I'll be **gentle,** " he promised darkly, leaning closer to his victim until his breath brushed up directly in her face. He pecked her lightly on her chin, garnering another uncomfortable shudder as he continued to probe.

 _"Must… not… move,"_ Nanako mentally hissed as she felt fingers slip towards an abused entrance. She managed to stop a shudder that time, but was powerless to stop the pain that came with the effort. She fought to maintain her peaceful expression, which seemed to tell Shifu everything she _didn't_ want him to know; perhaps he had intentionally misconstrued her playing possum as an invintation to continue fondling her. However, as the fingers slipped, she noticed she felt something else having been placed between her legs. It covered her entire slit, thoroughly, and was made sticky with her blood.

Shifu's brow furrowed as he found he could not get past this new barricade. "Hrm? This is unprecedented…" he mused, hand pulling away. The blood that smeared his fingers was very miniscule, enough that it wouldn't show on his shirt or pants. He wiped away the evidence on his knee, and pulled the blanket back up to her hips, turning away to sigh in defeat. "It would seem you have won this round." 

Then he whirled back around, both hands seizing Nanako by her bandaged chest. "Or you would have, if your developing body didn't have so much more than just that one spot for me to play with…" he cooed darkly. He started to knead the covered mounds, trying to elicit a reaction of some sort from his hapless and now-bedridden victim. She made no sound, and kept herself still as a grave. The only indicator that she was still very much present in the waking world was her breathing, yet even that had slowed in an effort to deter her tormentor.

Shifu frowned at her seeming lack of acknowledgement. "Have you fallen asleep again?" he groused, releasing his hold and crossing his arms for a moment. His mental gears ground, and ideas tumbled in his head as he struggled to procure a way to address this issue.

 _"Just go away just go away just go awa-haaaaaay…"_ Nanako mentally pleaded, shrieking internally as she felt the demonic gaze bore deep into her soul once again. Unfortunately, he leaned over her again, only pausing as his breath started directly caressing her recovering flesh in a manner that made her skin burn—and not in a good way. Her stomach twisted again as she felt a wet, thin, smooth appendage meander its way across her neck. It stopped at where he'd felt for her pulse, lingering for a second before veering sharply and going up her cheekbone.

The limb retracted, and Shifu chuckled darkly. "Still sublime… I just want to keep tasting you… you're so delectable," he purred. He moved to her ear and gently nibbled its lobe. She still didn't move, but he could feel her tense nonetheless. So he pulled away from her ear and trailed across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose with his tongue. He inhaled deeply, and shifted to lick at her neck again, feeling her pulse run without an iota of control. He trailed back to her face, slithering about before his tongue found her lips and tried to slip between them.

 _That_ got a reaction—her lips tightened into a thin line as, in a blur of motion, Nanako balled her hand into a fist and made to sock him in the eye. However, her tormentor was quicker, lifting a hand to catch the strike before it could connect. "Now _there's_ a reaction!" he chirped, pulling away before forcibly lowering the raised fist back down, and he paused to lightly peck her on the lips with his own. "Although, it's still very much rude to hit back," he whispered against her lips. 

He then straightened his posture, seemingly realizing Kyoko could waltz back in at any moment now. "But, I'm afraid that'll be all for today; you need to be in tip-top shape for our next session, and I need an injection to take care of an unprecedented issue," he cooed, pulling back his hand, noting that she still had yet to open her eyes despite her attempt to hit back. He cast one last diabolical smirk towards Nanako, feeling his length twitch in anticipation. "But… this is merely a setback. Ta-ta." With that, he walked away and closed the curtain behind him.

Footsteps sounded, until curtains parted twice, followed by the sound of someone sitting down. Nanako winced and slowly lifted a hand under the covers, pulling them over her head before frantically wiping at her lips and her face and neck and ear in a manner that suggested a smudge had been left in those spots. A feeling of utter _wrongness_ settled in mere seconds later, when her brain caught up to the fact that the bastard had **kissed** her. _"Y-yuck! I don't wanna know where that mouth of his has been!"_ she mentally hissed, continuing to wipe at her mouth-touched spots until they started aching from a slight rawness.

The door hissed open after a mere five minutes passed since she was fondled, and footsteps echoed once more, now accentuated by the sound of wheels making mechanical groans. "Shifu, I brought the nearest drone…" Kyoko announced, though her tone was anything but pleased. "Lay down, so we can get this over with…"


	4. Lucidity

The door hissed open twice, once as Shifu got what he came for and left and once an hour after, and with a large grin on her face Kae merrily skipped into a large room lined with many beds surrounded by curtains. This room had enough beds to hold an entire starboard's crew worth of people, with yet two more doors on either side, hidden behind some very large beds. One of these curtains had two shadows bobbing and muttering about, one standing and the other sitting up in bed, a little ways to the right of the room. Kae sucked in a deep, mighty breath of air. "Kyo-kooooo," she sang triumphantly, "the planet we landed on has been approved for further testiiiiiing!"

The shadows jerked and stopped mumbling, before Kyoko called out in an uneasy tone of voice, "That's excellent. But do come here—Nanako told me something bizarre."

Kae frowned, and walked over to the bed with the shadows. Parting the curtains upon reaching it, her brow furrowed as she saw Nanako shivering with a pair of books in her lap. Her face was red, and her face contorted into a disgusted scowl, with some parts of her bandaged arms holding a darker patch or three of very light grey. "What's up, Kyo?" she asked, turning to Kyoko.

Kyoko shook her head and gestured to Nanako. "I'd like to think you'd rather hear it from the horse's mouth," she muttered dismally. Kae turned to Nanako again, a brow raised.

Nanako swallowed nervously, arms trembling. It took her several long moments, and a few deep breaths for her to gather herself before words just flew out of her mouth at a mile a minute, "Shifutouchedmebetweenmylegsonmychestandkissedmeonthelips!"

Kae shook her head and her pupils shrank. Her brain struggled to process what she had just heard, as it had been spoken far too fast to be anything relatively coherent. "C-come again? S-slowly?" she asked.

_"Shifutouchedmebetweenmylegsonmychestandkissedmeonthelips!"_ Nanako repeated, that time in a shrill voice.

Kyoko and Kae shared worried glances. "Do you want me to translate, or did you catch that the second time?" Kyoko asked, her voice frigid with a scorn that wasn't necessarily directed at her companions, but felt by them nonetheless.

Kae took a few seconds to process Nanako's harried gobbledygook before grimly shaking her head. "No, I got it…" she muttered, turning to Nanako. "When did it happen?"

Nanako sucked in a deep breath. "A-after Kyoko went to g-get a drone," she muttered, her voice raspy and her throat aching a little due to yelling in one breath for brief intervals. "He just…"

Kyoko's look softened, and she approached Nanako before giving her a hug. Nanako returned the gesture, burying her face into Kyoko's collarbone. It made her feel a little better that Shifu went no further than hands-on touching and licking, but _only_ a little better. She had also managed to convey a smidgen of what had happened to her current company, who were admittedly skeptical if their reactions were any indicator, but she didn't convey to them the full story. That made her stomach twist again, and she winced as it clenched.

"That is…" Kyoko swallowed and paused, choosing her next words carefully, "… a very serious accusation to make, Nanako. We'd have to pull him from his research to interrogate him about it, and we know how he gets when that happens." Nanako wilted, as upon hearing Kyoko make that statement, she realized her tone was glum. She was none too optimistic about _those_ prospects. And while she was willing to give Nanako the benefit of the doubt, as her accusation was not one to be taken lightly, there was still the problem of finding evidence with which to back her claim up. On that front? Zero, zip, nada was forthcoming insofar as she knew, and Nanako provided nothing with which to cement said claim.

Kae lifted her arms and held her hands behind her head. "Maaaaan, why doesn't Shifu just let us use the camera system in this stuffy ship already?" she groaned, frowning. "If we could use it, and he touched her as she said… then the feed would've caught it."

Kyoko shook her head and looked at Kae with another dismal frown. "We scarcely have the time for it because there's too many cameras, and too few staff to manage it. Shifu has decided it would be much better if half the entire crew was augmented anyway; he said something about bones collapsing in space otherwise. Hopefully, this planet will yield us the necessary materials to address that issue, or at least he'll be less stingy about the feed's usage in the future," she muttered.

Kae nodded and dropped her hands. "Hopefully," she agreed with a nod. "So… what should we do in the meantime? Saki's gone walkabout, and Iru's still with reconnaissance."

"For now…" Kyoko let go of Nanako, and watched as she picked up one of the books from her lap. "Hrm… we'll still need to prepare for surgery…"

"But one of us should—" Kae started, only to be interrupted as Nanako opened one of the books and started frantically flitting through its pages. She turned to the bedridden girl as she scrounged said pages, speed-reading before flipping entire handfuls by the dozens. "Nanako, why do you have a _dictionary?_ " she asked.

"Lookin' for a specific word," was Nanako's curt reply, and she was already speeding along the 'L' section. "Where is it, where is it…"

"What's the word you're hunting for?" Kyoko asked, brow slanting and frown twisting a little in befuddlement.

"Men… men… aha!" Nanako muttered, having found the word. She lifted a hand to gesture Kyoko over, and when she leaned close she pointed at the word in question. "That one."

"Menstrua…" Kyoko stopped and gave an exasperated groan, followed by both hands moving up—one to remove her glasses, the other to promptly facepalm immediately after. "Has anybody given you the talk yet?!"

Nanako slumped a little. "No…" she muttered weakly. "Mom and dad… can't," she added uneasily.

"Kyoko, isn't she a little _young_ for that talk?" Kae interjected as Kyoko dropped her hands, but not before putting her glasses back on.

"Not anymore, Kae. She's hit her first… ahem, period," Kyoko grumbled, mouth contorting awkwardly as she said that. "Great Guardian God, this is going to be a long day…" She slumped, arms dropping and head shifting to hang as low as it could go. "Kae, _help me._ "

Kae went rigid, and her eyes almost bulged out. "Y-you mean…" she stammered, face blanching at the implications. Kyoko gave a very slow, very grim nod.

"Yes…" Kyoko groused, turning to look at Kae with an expression that was likewise paling. "And we'll have to look at her wounds carefully during the procedure. To have both a prolapse and a slight mutilation at the same time is unheard of…" Her eyes darted to Nanako briefly, as she put down the dictionary and picked up the other book. "The fact she accused the leader of our fleet no less… it's rather disconcerting, to say the least. Which is saying nothing of what she said he supposedly did to her in my absence."

"It is," Kae agreed with a hesitant nod. "It's like saying the Guardian God runs around killing people and demanding virgin sacrifices. It just… doesn't make sense. Shifu's either here getting treated, or up to the eyeballs in research when he isn't flinging out orders to get this done or that put away."

Nanako opened the other book and buried her face between its pages with an inaudible grumble. "So why would she make such a claim?" Kyoko muttered, lifting a hand to rub her chin contemplatively. "Shifu would never do that, not even to a child…"

"Yeah. He's swimming in so many papers I'm amazed he hasn't fathered a kid yet," Kae muttered, crossing her arms above her bosom. "'Not worth my time,' he'd say. He'd be more interested in making sure every augmented person can survive and withstand the changes to their bodies."

Nanako made another inaudible grumble, and started flitting the pages. At least she had something to distract herself with, now that her tormentor had taken his business elsewhere. Although, a very small part of her mind had to concede with Kae's point about the augments, and the wound on her head ached at the reminder.

"Kae… go find Nanako's mother and inform her she's… needed in a few days' time," Kyoko groaned. "See if you can pull her father too, while you're at it."

Kae wilted. "Last I seen of them, they were with reconnaissance…" she muttered.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

A few days passed without incident, with Nanako being deemed ready for surgery. During the initial operation, nothing went awry, as it was merely stitching wounds up or putting a prolapse back into place, all the while examinations went underway. It concluded with the addition of yet more bandages, and a few stitches for the more serious wounds.

But it was _after_ that procedure, with Nanako well off into dreamland, did things start to go wrong. She found herself in a familiar place that she did not want to revisit, staring at her tormentor, who reclined casually in his chair with that wicked two-headed tool in his hand. He tapped it once, impatiently, glasses glinting demonically. He lifted the tool and gestured at her, before slowly bringing it to the floor. Thinking he was bading her to look down, Nanako swallowed a lump and let her eyes gravitate to the patch in front of her feet.

She blanched. Before her was a pair of socks of ridiculous length, and a pair of matching fingerless gloves. There was a small headband, framed with faux feline ears, both of which were jet black. Laden atop the socks was… a long, slender object of some kind, riddled with false fur and sporting leather straps complete with clasps. To top it all off, a bell-bespectacled collar rested with the objects, neon pink with black highlights.

Nanako glanced back up, but not before noticing she was wearing clothes consisting of a simple black shirt with a purple, baggy jumpsuit with straps that functioned more like overalls and a zipper at the front that stretched to her neck. "Wh-what do you want me to do?" she muttered, confusion flashing in her eyes.

"Put those on," Shifu instructed, lifting his tool to let it rest against his shoulder. "But not before you take your current clothes off."

"H-huh?!" That bizarre request made Nanako jump in place. "Wh-why do you want me to do that?"

"For the love of… just do it," Shifu barked, starting to tap his tool impatiently.

Nanako flinched, lifting her hands to fidget with her thumbs. "Is… is mom gonna be okay with this?" she queried sincerely, tilting her head.

Shifu gave a shrug. "She was alright with you being augmented, and so was your father," he replied. The tool shifted again, and fell onto the desk in a firm, clattering thud. "Now put on the socks…" Nanako stiffened, unable to comprehend why he wanted her to do this. Haltingly, she set about removing her jumpsuit, dragging the zipper down.

"Where do you want me to put my clothes?" Nanako asked as she wiggled out of the garment.

"Right where you're standing, but not on top of the costume," Shifu replied, donning a small smile as Nanako folded the jumpsuit and put it on the floor. She fidgeted awkwardly, brow furrowing and lips twisting into a frown as she started pulling her shirt over her head.

Once that was off of her body, she folded it up and set it atop the jumpsuit, revealing a pair of shorts that were hidden beneath the jumpsuit. She hesitated with her shorts, feeling the cold gaze boring into her. The tool was lifted with a metallic skitter, and started tapping upon the desk. "We haven't all bloody day, Nanako," Shifu growled, eyes narrowing threateningly low. Hearing the skitter made her take her shorts off, fold them up, and rest then atop her other clothes. He smiled when this revealed that only a pair of panties remained.

Nanako turned away, frowning. "I-I'm too old to play d-dress up…" she grumbled.

"Now then… take the panties off," Shifu commanded, the order causing Nanako to pale.

She turned back to him, eyes going wide. "Wh-what?!" she shrieked. However, before the dream could progress, it simply faded to black, and her mind lingered for a long while in the sable afterward. Yet… this failed to block out what noises had come after. It was as if her mind had elected to eject itself from the dream, but simply could not do so, at least not wholly. It was a maddening orchestra of words after that, hewn of incomprehensible gibberish that only grew less and less cohesive with each second.

Screams and whimpers and pleas and howls of bestial rage bounced about in the darkness, coalescing into an incessantly playing, horrendous cacophony which started making her head hurt. Its words were utterly lost to Nanako, less spoken thought and more indecipherable syllables hopelessly tumbling and turning over each other at several miles a minute. The more she listened to this symphony, the number her body became to it, and the duller all of her senses except that of hearing grew. Space went askew, time was lost, and gravity may well have ceased to exist with it.

She tried to block her ears, but found she could not move her arms. The horrendous song assaulting her senses, her _being,_ continued to play undeterred, adding new notes in the form of yet more incomprehensible nonsense which may well have been instruments. The new notes clashed with the notes already playing, growing louder in volume, as if they tried to outshine the other.

As if new and already-present notes disagreed with each other.

She wanted out, more than anything else, yet no matter how much she willed her body to move she could not get out of this insane tarantella. She was helpless, forced to spend an agonizingly long eternity in this numbing, sound-riddled darkness that seemed too corporeal to be a mere trick of the mind.

Light returned. Sound ceased to exist. Gravity reasserted its hold, as did spacetime itself, and she found herself back in that dismal room once again. Her nerves flared in agony, yet oddly the feeling was mitigated, and she glanced around to find her arms and legs once again splayed wide, though now the bars holding them in place let them rest on the bed by her hands and knees. She faced the door, shivering in dread. It took her but a second to locate Shifu, once again bereft of clothes himself, though he was busy fumbling at the nightstand and muttering expletives as he dug through the drawer. "I know I put it here somewhere…" he grumbled.

Nanako wisely kept her mouth shut, and looked at her body, finding fading bruises and… what the? Those long socks now adorned her legs, clear up to her thighs, and straps had been affixed to her hips to let that faux-furred object dangle just behind them rather obscenely. She turned to her arms, finding the gloves had done likewise. Hearing a jingle as she moved, she tried to look at her neck, but only found a bell sticking out in front of her chest. Besides that, she was in the nude. Her breath hitched when she heard the drawer slam, and found Shifu walking over to her with some sort of strap-boasting object in his mouth. It was attached to a thin wire, with a box adorned with a dial placed neatly on its singular strap on one end, and… something that was ovoid in shape on the other.

Shifu smiled, noting she was staring at the object he held. He parted one hand from it and patted her head, ruffling a thin object that had been affixed there. It shifted from side to side, not falling off yet letting her know it was there all the same. "Wandering what this is, my little kitten?" he cooed; Nanako resisted another retch at that and gave a shaky nod. He made her dress up, bruised her, and had her chained. What was next on this bastard's agenda?!

The smile of the demon before her took on a sickening cast, and he walked around to affix the strange object to one of her thighs. "An experiment," he answered bluntly. "I'll let you come up with a name for it…" She tensed, feeling that strange… shape prod at her slit. It slipped in with a push, and stopped just shy of her entrance.

"M-meow?" Nanako muttered, before her heart stopped at what had just left her mouth. She would have clasped her hands over her mouth then and there, but they were chained, so the next best alternative was to bend her elbows and bring her face to the bed. She sank in the stained covers in shame, face reddening in embarrassment.

"Don't fret, Nanako, I'll be gentle…" Shifu promised darkly, brushing a hand across her underdeveloped thighs. Nanako tensed again, bracing for something to violate her more than that ovoid object was.

But that violation never came. Instead, there was a soft whir, a dial clicking and—at once her mind was clouded in a new sensation that caught her blindsided. "M-mrow?!" she yelped, jolting back up as much as her bonds would allow. She felt an intense vibration, that ovoid object shaking so much it was brushing up against her most sensitive areas at once. Tears built up fast, and her mouth clenched shut as she felt a pressure of some sort building up, bringing with it a feeling of clashing pleasure, pain and anger.

Shifu walked back to the nightstand and fumbled again at its drawer for a few seconds, grinning diabolically as Nanako let out another startled meow. "Just ride it out…" he advised, searching through a menagerie of objects that were hopelessly cluttered. Nanako, however, started shaking her rear end in an attempt to dislodge the vibrating object, crying in mortification as it refused to move out.

If anything, the unwanted intruder managed to slip deeper, in turn garnering a particularly strangled meow. Her legs shook, and so did her arms, both weakening in the onslaught of rising pressure, and trepidation filled her as Shifu pulled out a white, corked bottle that had jostling objects within. She still rocked back and forth, trying hopelessly to get the first object out, even as sweat started beading on her brow.

Shifu uncorked the bottle and looked inside. "Hrm… I'll need to refill this soon…" he muttered, before turning the bottle into his palm and letting a small pill tumble out. He sealed the bottle, careful to avoid dropping the pill, and put it back into the nightstand before walking over to Nanako again. He smirked at her face of embarrassed distress, eyes wide and unfocused as she tried desperately to stop the pressure, only to inadvertently bring herself closer to its edge. He clutched the pill tightly, watching as she shut her mouth and grit her teeth when her shaking increased tenfold.

Shifu lifted his other hand and cupped Nanako's chin, lifting her head up so she could look into his eyes. He leaned so they were nose to nose, never once breaking eye contact, still wearing that abysmal smile of damnation as though he were staring at something which could be construed as his pride and joy. "You're reacting nicely to the stimulation," he cooed. "Just relax… let it take you…"

Nanako refused to heed that, still shaking with fervor. Shifu found her attempts to dislodge the object that was distressing her adorable, and for now he was content to simply wait. Another strangled meow left his hapless victim, laced with hiccups and sniffles as she started to cry. He could tell she wanted it to stop, and her admirable fervor reflected that desire, but she was fighting a losing battle. When her body could take no more, her bladder snapped and let loose, and she felt a series of terrible quivers that came from deep within wreak havoc on her hips. Once the flow became a trickle, she slumped with eyes glazing in defeat, with only Shifu's hand holding her up by the chin.

"Oh, my, you were just so pent up…" Shifu muttered, grin refusing to falter as her gaze veered sharply to the side. He lifted the pill to her mouth, revealing a white capsule. "Here, take this, dear. It'll help calm your nerves…"

Nanako's jaw quivered, and haltingly she obeyed. She felt another hand clasping over her mouth, and the pill plopping on her tongue, before she swallowed. When he was sure the pill had gone down the hatch, Shifu leaned down to kiss her on the lips before he let go entirely, letting his captive collapse with the grace of a sack of potatoes. She kept her gaze to the side, mind fogged with unwanted pleasure that made her skin crawl and the foul tingle that lingered from the kiss. Her tormentor walked around and, finally, dislodged the ovoid object before turning a dial, which caused the whirring to cease. "Goodness, you're red," Shifu muttered, prodding at her slit with a finger. Nanako flinched at the touch, as that whole area was now very sensitive.

She felt the bed shift, and cooling liquid slosh around and under her before hands grasped her rear end. Dread spiked in her, clawing its way through the smog, and at once a fresh wave of tears started. She meowed loudly in protest as she felt a foul object prodding at her pucker, but oddly her tormentor paused to rub her slit with his hands. He picked up some of the wetness that clung to her nethers and smeared it over his own length quite generously. 

When that was done, his hands returned to her rear and held tight. With a great deal of force Shifu forced his way into her hole, stretching her once again. His groin connected with her hips, and pain danced across her whole body, yet strangely it started to ebb almost immediately. Her tormentor gasped sharply, shivering in cruel delight as Nanako started to tug at her bonds. Alas, her earlier struggle had left her weak in the limbs, and her tugs were little more than a slight jerking as a result. Calming her nerves, the pill did not; if anything that fueled her frantic but slow struggling.

She still tried to get out, even as the last of her strength was depleted with a few well-timed and vicious thrusts from Shifu. "Just stop your squirming and take it," he warned in a scathing tone of voice, "or else I'll take out the crowbar again." Nanako obeyed, though she did not stop yowling like a cat in protest. The pleasure from earlier waned now, pain fast replacing it as he kept sliding into her without stopping. One hand moved up to her mouth and seized it, sliding two fingers in to keep her from biting down. She gagged upon feeling a slimy substance strongly tasting of an extreme saltiness, laced with a faint note of something else she couldn't identify. She took the hint and stopped screaming, and at this she felt a thumb brush up against her cheek.

"Shhhh, my little pet," Shifu muttered in a voice that would have been fatherly, if not for a malicious edge paired with what he was currently doing to her. "Just relax. Be glad I used a sort of lubricant for once." The other hand slipped under her stomach, and she felt his length hilt before long. "How in the great engines of our grand vessel _Sumika_ are you able to stretch so much?" he wondered, feeling Nanako cough against his hand.

Nanako could only give a sniffling, hiccuping meow in response. She balled her hands into fists to stave off the growing pain, toes likewise curling to help with the useless effort. He kept thrusting, wetly smacking into her defenseless rear again and again. "You're t-taking this so well…" he cooed, slowing his thrusts to a sluggish pace to savor the moment. Nanako shook her head, giving another choked meow in reply, tensing and clenching in futility. Yet no matter what she did, he would not pull out, but seemed to take the hint and slowed a little more. "What's wrong?"

Nanako gave a hiss and started grinding her teeth against his fingers. Shifu replied by simply pushing his fingers deeper, until they brushed up against her tonsils. "Shhhh… you'll get used to the burn, love," he cooed, his sickly sweet tone making Nanako gag against his hand. He sped up from a crawl to a moderate tempo, hilting in her repeatedly and firmly. He hummed appreciatively, and shifted his fingers to rub against the inside of her cheek to keep her from biting down on them.

This did not stop her from meowing in protest again, but she found herself too drained to keep clenching forever. She loosened, but only as she started growing numb to it again. Her vision turned fuzzy in places as she felt him speed up, hitting his mark over and over again, intent on tainting her insides once more. It did not take long for her tormentor to grunt, still, and fill her once again with that terrible warmth. But once that warmth finished leaving him, Shifu decided to thrust some more and smear it all over her insides, adding to the ache already settling there. Only when his length was thoroughly coated did he slip out and heave a husky, pleased sigh. "There, there," he cooed in exhaustion, removing his hand from her mouth to pat her none too affectionately on the head. "That's a good girl…"

Nanako's eyes closed, and when she did darkness overtook her once again. She was thrust into another maddening frenzy of horrid sounds whose sources she couldn't make out, interspersed with agony flaring through her nerves in vengeance. She could not move again, until an indeterminate amount of time later, when her eyes opened to behold the sight of curtains surrounding a bed again, this time with a gentle but incessant beeping singing in the air. Her mouth cracked open, though not of her own volition, as the curtains slid open before Kyoko and Kae swam into her view. Their mouths moved, but their voices were muted, and all Nanako registered was that her vision turned fuzzy once again.


End file.
